


The High Seas Job

by Desiderii



Category: Leverage
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Background Relationships, Crack Treated Seriously, Fake Character Death, Ghost pirates, Ghosts, Light-Hearted, Multi, OT3, Pirates, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 03:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16360163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desiderii/pseuds/Desiderii
Summary: A Leverage Pirate AU based onsome-thrilling-heroics' sweet artfor the Leverage Dual Bang!Parker's the captain/mastermind/thief, Eliot's the first mate/cook/punchy guy, and Hardison's the navigator/genius/secret tavern owner. Together they sail the Caribbean, taking jobs, helping people, and generally being awesome (like you do). One day, an old "friend" comes to the crew with a job, a job which Parker decides they need to solve with ghosts. Clearly.





	1. Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Leverage Big Bang/Leverage Reverse Big Bang (aka the Leverage Dual Bang) and is based on [some-thrilling-heroics](http://some-thrilling-heroics.tumblr.com)' [amazing Art Things!](http://some-thrilling-heroics.tumblr.com/post/179269779376/leveragebigbang-the-high-seas-job-story-by)
> 
> I ended up adding ghosts in honor of upcoming Halloween. Please enjoy!

Fairy lights danced along the coast, bright points fading to dark as the foliage grew dense and the beach rocky. Soon after, the settlement slipped behind the curve of the island, and they were alone on the water once more. The mast she clung to swung in a gentle arc as the waves rocked her ship, and she struggled to fend off a doze. Twilight was sleep time for most people, even if Parker wasn’t one of them, but the top of the world was the most peaceful place she’d ever been.

They were coming up on the promontory, though, Nate’s promontory, and she did want to be awake for that, just in case. She stirred as the ship creaked. Their course stopped pointing toward the flat, bushy island they’d been using for their heading and swung towards the sharp island with the wiggly top just coming into view on the horizon. Almost there.

Leaning away from the mast, eyes on the promontory, she called, “We need to head for the tavern.”

Eliot turned his face up toward her from where he stood at the helm, guiding them through the shallows as night fell. They had been on their way to a safe overnight anchorage just a bit past the promontory. Not anymore, though. He waved, dropped his hands to the wheel, and she felt the change in the ship as he began to take their new heading, just like that.

She huffed and climbed down. She hit the deck lightly, letting go of her sliding rope, and said, “You didn’t ask why.”

“We’re passin’ Nate’s promontory.”

“Yeah, but you always ask.”

“Hardison always asks. I ain’t waking up the whole damn ship.”

“You wouldn’t. They’re not asleep yet. It’s suppertime.”

“Then I ain’t yelling just to—”

The thump and rattle of the hatch near the helm heralded Hardison’s arrival. He poked his head above the deck behind them and asked, “What’s this about the tavern?”

He was proprietary about the tavern. In that it was his tavern.

“We need to head for it,” Parker told him.

“Why?”

Parker threw a vindicated look at Eliot just as he was sending an identical one her way. Leaning down toward Hardison, she dropped her volume to ‘conspiratorial.’ “There’s a candle in the window.”

“Like—metaphorically?” Hardison asked, shoving himself up onto the deck proper and sitting there for a minute, blinking into the twilight.

She huffed. “Yes. That’s the code. I told you we were going to use the code.”

“The code, right, right.”

“All pirates use codes.”

Hardison paused halfway through closing the hatch. “I’m not sure that’s what they mean by a pirate code, love.” He eyed her. “A candle in the tavern window?”

“She can’t see all the way to the tavern from here,” Eliot said, exasperated.

“You don’t know that,” Hardison countered. “You can see to the end of the world up there.”

Eliot rolled his eyes, but Parker beamed at Hardison. Yes, she could. That’s why it was great. Poor Hardison couldn’t stay aloft because it swayed too much—same as most of her crew—but it was nice to know he had faith in her. She planted a kiss on his head, then hopped up on the railing in front of the wheel to sit.

“Candle? Window?” Hardison prompted holding up his arm so Eliot could help him stand.

Eliot sighed and half-turned from the wheel, hauled Hardison upright, and returned to his task. “Nate’s got the promontory lantern lit.”

“Something wrong, you think?” Hardison asked.

Eliot half-shrugged. “Hey, Parker. What color?”

“Fire color.” Parker swung her legs. When that didn’t satisfy them, she said, “Yellow. It’s fine.”

Hardison relaxed, then joined her on the railing so they could both sit in front of Eliot and stare at him while he steered. He bumped her shoulder with his. “Be nice to get back to the tavern.”

With no metal powders in the oil to change the lantern's color, the light just meant ‘someone wants to talk.’ Not urgent, but not something they could ignore either. Or, maybe sort of urgent. Nate really didn’t put the lantern out all that often and now Eliot had that neutral/scowly concerned expression on where he wasn’t thinking anything except how to make everything not go wrong.

Hardison saw too, and he stiffened at her side. “How soon can we be there?”

Eliot glanced at him and said, “Sailing through the night, tomorrow evening. But Nate didn’t put any color in. It’s fine.”

“You don’t think it’s fine,” Parker said.

At that, Eliot turned the full force of his concern-glower on her. “Then what do you think?”

Parker pursed her lips and considered how to reassure them both. “I think there’s news. And maybe a job. Time sensitive. So it’s a good lantern. We like jobs.”

“A good lantern,” Eliot said. He looked dubious, but he was also starting a night at the helm when he wasn’t originally going to do that and that would make anyone dubious.

“If it wasn’t a good lantern, it would be a color other than fire,” Parker pointed out. “This is why we have codes.”

Hardison laughed. “Candle in the window?”

“We wouldn’t have called it that if it wasn’t a good lantern,” she told him. To Eliot, she said, “And Nate wouldn’t send us in to a trap.” She paused. “Anymore. Not since he gave up the ship.”

“Great,” Eliot said.

“Get us to the tavern and we’ll see for ourselves,” Parker said, bumping against Hardison again before telling him, “Get the little chart, the one with that cove with the squiggles marked. We can head for that instead and cut half a day off without drifting into any of the Spanish lanes. I’ll go up and make sure we don’t hit anything and we’ll be there by afternoon.”

The first stars had already started to glimmer, but there would be blue in the sky for another few minutes at least. Enough time grab something to eat, then climb aloft and get herself situated before they all settled in for the night.

Eliot was shaking his head, but Hardison nudged her companionably and said, “Aye, Captain.”

A moment later, Eliot let out a sigh and added an, “Aye, Captain,” of his own.

 

* * *

 

Of the three of them, Hardison was the only one who got any sleep. He was also apparently the only one who was still damn tired as they made their way up the dock. The early afternoon sun shone hot, sapping his strength, and the sack of sundries for the tavern weighed heavy on his shoulder, but he mostly blamed the low-grade anxiety from answering Nate’s lantern despite Parker’s insistence that it was a good lantern. Like getting a letter from someone who never wrote. Those never contained good news.

The bounce in Parker’s step as she walked at his side suggested she didn’t share his apprehension, nor did her bright, cheerful instructions letting him know how much of the share he had to spend on navigation equipment while they were back. And Eliot had once told him he only needed to sleep for one watch a night. Honestly, Hardison was convinced that Eliot just steered them in his sleep, trusting that Parker aloft would wake him if they drifted.

And there Eliot went, thundering up the dock in full charge, totally like he hadn’t been up for a full day at least. Hardison yawned.

Parker stiffened at his side and took off after him. “Woah, woah—” Hardison protested.

Eliot didn’t go far. He pulled to a stop just out of punching distance of a tall, elegant woman in heavy boots and a loose blouse who had been leaning on one of the dock’s heavy wooden pylons that stuck up past the planking. She took one look at him and drew herself up to drop into a fighting stance that looked an awful lot like the one Eliot was using now.

“I was waiting for you,” she said, her accent thick and rounded.

“Hey, hey, just a minute, now,” Hardison tried, jogging to catch up. _Shit._

“Who sent you?” Eliot growled.

The stranger remained silent, her eyes on Eliot’s shoulders even though the man had practically zero tells. She adjusted her fists and her footwork, mirroring Eliot’s own minute shifts.

Parker flung herself between them and shoved a palm into each of their faces. “No! Tavern first!”

The stranger, startled, reined in her immediate reaction that could have been very bad for Parker and stepped back in a hurry.

Eliot snarled at Parker and swatted her hand down, trying to slam past her and shove her behind him at the same time, but Parker kept in his business until he realized that the stranger was just standing there, arms loose at her sides, expression wary. Without her making threatening squinty faces, even he couldn’t justify doing that brawler mating dance again and had to settle for using his words. “Back off.”

“I am not here to fight, merely to speak.”

“Which,” Parker said, interrupting Eliot when he would have opened his mouth. “We’ll do at the tavern.”

“She’s—” Eliot started.

Parker cut him off again by looping her arm through the stranger’s and throwing him a bright smile, and Eliot was left to sputter. The stranger, for her part, stiffened but didn’t object. She let herself be steered around and back up the dock, glancing back only once with a familiar Parker-induced look of bewilderment on her face.

Eliot grabbed Hardison’s arm and started to drag him after the women. Hardison almost dropped his sack.

“C’mon,” Eliot said. “She can’t be trusted.”

“Who the hell is she?” Hardison asked.

“Mikel Dayan. Mercenary.” Eliot expression changed. “Real good.”

Hardison looked from the Eliot’s face to the stranger, Mikel, where she was walking in front of them and back. That was definitely admiration on Eliot’s face. “Like your kind of real good?”

A tightening in Eliot’s jaw told Hardison yeah, yeah she was. Eliot said, “No problem with killin’, either.”

That made Hardison try to break away from Eliot’s gip. “And you’re just lettin’ Parker—”

“I ain’t lettin’ anyone do anything.”

Parker frowned at them over her shoulder and wrinkled her nose. “We can hear you.”

“Yeah,” Eliot said pointedly. “Which means I’m close enough to do something if she gets any ideas.”

Mikel let out a small snort of what might have been laughter, and Eliot’s hand tightened on Hardison’s arm.

“Hey, man,” Hardison protested, “Don’t go bruising me with your beefy punching hands.”

Eliot released him, slapped him hard on the back to show he didn’t mean anything by it, and settled into walk at his side. “I don’t like this.”

Hardison re-shouldered his sack. “And you think she was waiting to—what?”

“I don’t know, man. If you see me hanging around, it’s bad news. Better safe than sorry.”

Hard to argue with that, especially when Eliot was laser-focused on Mikel and Parker as they continued through off the docks and into the port settlement. If Mikel tried anything, Eliot was ready to launch.

Hardison’s tavern was tucked down on a side-alley and around the back, and its sign wasn’t the large sort that invited custom from just anyone walking by. Rather, the sign was a discrete thing that sat over the lintel of the door, a carven scrawl that said, “Lucille's.” Most found it by invitation, need, or luck, and the place catered to locals, the important, and sailors of all sorts.

Well. Mostly.

Honestly, the place was usually just filled with pirates.

Mikel dug in her heels when they reached the door of Lucille's and turned so that she could address all three of them. “We are at the tavern, and so I will speak.”

Parker’s face twisted up in consternation, her lips pursed and brow furrowed, but she nodded. It was her serious face, the one that said she was absorbing probably more than anyone could guess.

Nodding back, Mikel then took a deep breath, meeting the eyes of each of them for a moment as she exhaled. “I have a problem that I need your help to solve.”

“What sort of problem?” asked Eliot.

“I am working for no one but myself,” she replied, answering Eliot’s question from earlier. “But the ship I have come from—the crew is in dire need.”

“Woah, woah,” Hardison held up a hand to stop her. “You’re talking about a job.”

Mikel dipped her chin. “I have a job for you, yes, if you will take it.”

“And we will,” Parker said immediately.

Eliot’s protest jumbled with Hardison’s. “What?! You can’t just—what happened to—”

Parker made a slicing gesture across her neck and they quieted enough for her to ask Mikel, “How did you know we’d be here?”

“The woman—? Lucille, inside the tavern. She said that you would be coming back today. And so I waited for you.”

Eliot swore under his breath, but Hardison asked Parker, “Our candle in the window?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Lucille” wouldn’t have told Mikel where they would be unless she’d done her preliminary and sent word to Nate to light the lantern. They were all too careful for that. Addressing Mikel once more, Parker said, “Okay. We need to hear the whole thing.”

“I am afraid it is a long thing to tell.”

“Well then,” Hardison said. “Let’s get inside. There’s a new brew to try while we talk.” The one he’d started before they’d last left port should be just about done fermenting. “And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starving.”

 

* * *

 

 The inside of Hardison’s tavern was larger than it looked like from the outside, full of long tables with benches, the lighting warm and the atmosphere comfortable. The food, too, was as good as Eliot could teach their cook to make. Not that he didn’t take over the kitchen when he was actually here, like now, but when he wasn’t, people still came and complemented “Lucille” on her fine victuals. 

However, Eliot couldn’t quite bring himself to leave the main room to stake his claim over the stove yet, not with the chaos of their return making it that much harder for him to keep track of Mikel. Hardison and Parker were saying their hellos to Amy, their barmaid, and getting Mikel situated on one of the benches. Hardison was already dumping the sack he’d brought from the ship out on the table, spice jars and teas scattering across the wood.

The handful of regulars who were the only ones lingering in the tavern in the afternoon heat cleared out when Eliot and the others made their appearance. Left behind were only those who belonged. Good. Less targets in case Mikel decided to make her move—though he was forced to admit that it didn’t seem likely.

“Parker!” Sophie swanned out of the kitchens, exclaiming, “Hardison, Eliot, you made it back! And early.” Tara trailed her with a dry, amused expression to go with her swagger. Sophie was in her “Lucille” getup. She’d elected to play the host for Hardison’s place rather than go on the supply run with them.

While hugs were traded and Amy disappeared into the kitchens to start pouring and plating something for them to wrangle over, Tara held back to do her own assessment of the newcomer. She drifted Eliot’s way as she did.

“Sophie wouldn’t have sent for you if she thought it was a bad job,” Tara told him.

Eliot huffed and turned from her to lock the tavern door.

Mikel was in the middle of the maelstrom now, though she sat silently, her dark eyes observing everything and giving nothing away. Sophie and Parker spoke over and past Mikel, Sophie driving light smalltalk and fielding Parker’s sideways answers while Hardison scooped up his spoils and took them into the back.

“Amy find her?” Eliot asked.

“More or less,” Tara said. She was Sophie’s...second when the rest of them were at sea. Self-assured, and someone that Eliot had had to grow to trust despite Sophie vouching for her. Now, though, her judgement was as weighty as any of the rest of theirs. “The woman was looking for you, though. Asking about the Fulcrum. Amy didn’t think it could wait until you got back in port the usual way, and once she brought the tale to Sophie, she agreed. Sent word to Nate.”

The Fulcrum’s Confidence was Parker’s ship. Their ship. Considering that they put into every port under a different name, only someone who knew what sort of jobs they took could ask for them by ship. Mercenaries weren’t the sort they told. Eliot ground his teeth. “The kind of people she’s—”

“Eliot!” Sophie interrupted him, coming over to buss him on the cheek. Regal even in her proprietress’ apron, she took his hands in hers and leaned in. She’d read his doubt and, quietly, she murmured, “Listen to her story. This has nothing to do with her past or yours.”

Frowning at her, he let her lead him to the table just as Amy finished bring in food and Hardison’s most recently brewed experiment.

Mikel curled her hands around her tankard, solemn. Silent. Situationally aware, but drawing inward. For someone of Mikel’s calibre to simply stop paying attention...

Eliot sat down next to her, ready to listen. The others had been waiting on him, apparently. Everyone settled, nobody drank, but they all focused on Mikel.

Parker tilted her head. “We made it to the tavern. This is the crew. What’s going on?”

With a sigh, Mikel began, “A year, two ago, I joined a ship. Charged by the English Crown to hunt pirates that hunt the Caribbean. A good ship. Good crew. A captain I was proud to follow.”

She stared inside her tankard, but none of the others interrupted. Parker had no questions yet, fixed as she was on Mikel and her words.

“My captain recently took a job from a man who owns most of his little island, except for one small settlement. This job, it is a mercenary job. Bully work. To terrorize these people, force them to flee and forfeit their land to this man. Nothing we ever should have accepted.

“When I objected, I was put off at the nearest shore. This was...this…”

She lost her words, and Parker filled them in. “Weird. That’s weird. Not just pirate hunter playing mercenary, but you were the Captain’s Mate, weren’t you?” Mikel nodded as Parker added, “Sophie said.”

“And Captain Oliva and I were friends, I had thought,” Mikel said.

Across the table, Hardison startled, Parker laid a hand on his arm, and they both looked to Sophie. She nodded at them in confirmation. Same Olivia. Another reason why this wouldn’t have been able to wait, then.

Friend or not, though. Didn’t matter. Eliot said, “You used to do a lot of mercenary work.” He watched her face.

Mikel blinked at him, momentarily startled, and then smiled a slow, lazy smile that made him want to bite his tongue. “So did you. In the past. I have heard this.” She tipped her head, her glance darting toward Parker and Hardison, and Eliot sucked in his breath. She continued as if she had not made any silent comparisons, “But my captain would have never accepted such a job even a month ago and I do not know what changed.”

“You want us to get your crew back?” Parker asked, eyes narrowed, not sure of her interpretation.

Hardison leaned into Parker’s shoulder. “Or save the settlement?”

“Or are you just looking for a new crew?” Tara drawled from her place at the far end of the table.

Eliot just watched. Something was off.

Sophie, her chin on her fist, hummed lightly and said, “You know more.”

Mikel looked at each of them in turn, Eliot last, then downed her entire tankard in three, four gulps. When she was done, she wiped her mouth, flexed her jaw, and set the tankard down as if it might shatter. “I have asked around and the man who hired us is known. Once the job is done, he will have them tried for piracy and they will all die. Please, save their lives.”

 

* * *

 

Hardison closed Lucille’s for the evening, and every so often someone came by and rattled the door. Before night had fallen yesterday, after Mikel had told them her story, they’d all scattered to sound out their contacts. Each of them had their own network of friends and favors owed and, a day later, Parker finally had enough to work with.

Hardison unrolled his chart on the long table. Islands sprawled the thick, fine linen paper, all of the heading and current notations written in his own hand. The others settled in around it.

Sophie had her hands wrapped around a teacup full of one of the teas that he’d brought ashore. Tara lounged at her side as Amy deposited another cup in front of her and perched on the next table over. The three of them would be staying at the tavern unless things went wrong. Sophie especially. She was supposedly just as retired as Nate was, though her contacts were still as numerous and as chatty as when she’d helped helm the crew. Mikel and Eliot sat next to each other, Eliot part bodyguard, part moral support. At the head of the table, Parker perched on a stool stolen from one of the other rooms.

With a flourish, Hardison began. He placed a spoon down on their destination. “Now the place’s not far. Maybe half a day’s sail. So we’ll have Lucille’s for support if we need it. We shouldn’t need it”—he threw a lopsided smile Eliot’s way—”but never hurts to be in the neighborhood.”

Parker held up her finger and said, “First! Island.”

“Saint Nicolas Island! Not super big,” Hardison tapped the spoon with his finger. The bowl pretty much covered the outline. “Small enough for one guy to claim if he has enough muscle. Mostly self-sufficient—which is why our settlement has a pretty substantial contingent of native Caribbean peoples. Been living there ages. Settlement’s on a safe harbor, big enough to be a haven port with fresh water but not big enough to be on most pirates’ charts. Got like eight names for it from a half-dozen people as it was, so I’ve just been calling it ‘Haven.’ Great spot. Can definitely see why this asshole wants it.”

“Second, the mark,” Parker said.

“Wow, this guy.” Hardison blew out his breath and gestured toward Sophie. “One of Sophie’s had the details, and he’s just...I mean, wow.”

Parker wrinkled her nose. “Lord Lawrence Gastrell.”

“Lord Lawrence Gastrell,” Hardison agreed. “Greedy as hell. Englishman. Honestly we think he just started calling himself a Lord when he set up shop on Saint Nicolas, no actual title involved because the island isn’t even his. Prone to issuing fake ‘letters of marque’ to his mercenaries that mysteriously turn out to be bogus. Maybe...four? Five ship have run afoul of him. Couldn’t find an exact body count, because he gave ‘em up to different sovereign courts.”

Eliot muttered something under his breath that made Mikel breathe out like she’d been jabbed in the side.

Continuing, Hardison said, “Biggest takeaway? He came in through Port Royal, stayed in one of the manor houses in Jamaica, and when he moved onto Saint Nicholas he built himself a bigger, fancier version. That’s applied to everything. Bigger fields. Bigger ships. He’s avaricious in almost a biblical sense. You got it, he wants it, and if it’s one of a kind, he will lord it over you.”

“He positively reeks of insecurity,” Sophie said, shaking her head. “It would be sad if it weren’t so devastating.”

“Exactly.” Hardison then leaned on the map and grinned at the others. “The good news? He’s super, _super_ superstitious. Like disgusting lucky amulets pawned on him to make him smell like dead shit, superstitious.”

“So, we’ll be using that,” Parker said. “But third—” She paused for dramatic effect. “Captain Oliva and her crew.”

Eliot took his cue with a gruff, “Oliva’s Sterling’s kid. Confirmed it with some of the navy guys on leave.”

“Thought so,” said Sophie, Tara murmured an agreement, and Hardison whistled. Amy and Mikel looked confused.

Mikel asked, “Who is this Sterling?”

“Short version,” Hardison said, “Nate’s rival. Pirate hunter with the navy. A pain in our collective asses even before the Kings Pardon went into effect. He captained a ship and went after a lot of the same folks as Nate did before the Fulcrum launched.”

“Oh,” Mikel said. “ _That_ Sterling. Olivi—Captain Olivia said nothing of her father.” She appeared disconcerted. “He is infamous. I did not know they were kin.”

Eliot said, “Yeah, and now his kid’s grown into a pirate hunter her dad would be proud of. She’s good and getting better with experience.”

“Sterling’s child.” Sophie shook her head. “All the more puzzling, then, that she’d accept mercenary work.”

There was a general murmur of agreement over that. Except for Amy, who wore a giddy sort of awe, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Hardison didn’t think this was the first time that she’d sat in, but this might be the biggest job they’d tackled since they’d hired her on at the tavern.

“So our goals,” Parker said, taking over and breaking Hardison out of his muse. “Are to save Haven _and_ Oliva’s crew by driving the mark back to England.”

Hardison added, “We get Saint Nicholas new management, and that basically takes care of the whole mercenary-settlement problem just entirely.”

“And we do it by haunting him!” Parker declared.

Eliot sighed and shared a long-suffering look with Tara, even though Hardison knew for a fact that he was going to have literally more fun than was legal with the whole haunting thing.

“Ooh, that’ll be fun,” Sophie said. “I almost wish I was going with you for that.”

“We’ll bring you in if we need you,” Eliot told her.

“Do. I’m rather fond of ghosts.”

“Makes sense. I’m the ghost,” Hardison said. She rolled her eyes at him. “Eliot’s going to be the Baron.”

Parker lit up, “And I’m going to be the pirate queen.” That earned her a giggle from Amy.

As Parker sketched out the initial con, Mikel began to look _deeply_ skeptical. “You are saying that this will work? This person will not find out you have haunted him and retaliate?”

“Maybe he’ll try,” Hardison said. “But he’s not going to be able to get away with his usual tricks. What’s he gonna do to ghosts?”

Mikel said, “Discover that you are not ghosts?”

Parker hummed over that. “I’ll make a few extra plans just in case, then. Better?”

Grudgingly, Mikel allowed, “Better.”

“Great!” said Parker with a grin. She glanced around and, if anything, her grin grew wider. “Let’s go steal an island!”

 

* * *

 

The Fulcrum’s Confidence creaked around Hardison as he slotted his newest charts into their cubbies in the captain’s quarters. Not all of them were for this particular job; it would take him months to incorporate all of the information into his own charts, which was fine by him. Double-checking his compass, bow compass, and long glass, he made sure they were tucked away in their padded boxes, ready for the sea.

The voices of the Fulcrum’s crew drifted through the open cabin door. Shouts as supplies were loaded, rigging was rigged, and some of Parker’s extra plans started to be implemented even before they set sail. Most of the crew had been helped out at one time or another by Parker and the rest of them, and they’d follow her into ‘here be dragons’ territory without hesitation.

Pirates, every one of them, yes, but— _their_ pirates. Who were used to Parker, Hardison, and Eliot’s...well. Their quirks.

“We are not sailing anywhere until the galley’s stocked and the last crate’s onboard.” Eliot was loud when he wanted to be. Hardison winced and went to stick his head out of the cabin as Eliot continued, responding to something Hardison couldn’t hear, “I don’t care! Then we’ll miss the tide.”

“Eliot, Eliot, man,” Hardison said, heading up to the main deck where Eliot was snarling at one of the deckhands who often helped out in in the galley. When Eliot was playing Cook, he settled for nothing less than perfection. That went double for job supplies. Hardison waved off the deckhand who just threw Hardison a small, grateful salute, and vanished down the gangplank back to the dock. “What’re we missing?”

“Bladders,” Eliot said. “Lime juice. All the jugs of it. Half the fresh stuff. Our chickens. A small barrel of pig’s blood. The extra flour. Yarn. One of the mates had a request for yarn and that hasn’t come—”

“Woah, man, woah. This isn’t a long haul.”

“You never know on a job, Hardison. You just don’t know. And with Parker wanting us to keep everyone belowdecks the whole time we’re there—”

“Right, okay.” Hardison held up his hands. “No leaving until we have bladders and lime juice.”

Eliot glowered at Hardison for a good half-minute, waiting, as neither of them moved. Most of Eliot’s irritation bled away, until his little not-smirk appeared and he had to work to keep the glower going.

And Hardison did try to go back to his charts. Navigating was hard work and required a lot of prep time, but he _had_ to ask, “So, like, sheep bladders, or—?”

“Apparently.”

“What are they fo—”

“I don’t know, man. Last minute addition.”

Another pause as they stared at each other. Hardison said, “I’ll ask Parker.”

“You let me know.” Eliot was already refocusing on a pair of deckhands carrying a large crate up the gangplank. Before he turned away, though, he shot a hand out to grip Hardison’s shoulder and squeezed. “This job’s bigger than anything we’ve done in a while. Let’s hope this Lord whatever is as superstitious as Sophie’s man says he is.”

“He better be,” Hardison said. “Or else all that extra flour’s on board for nothing.”

 

* * *

 

The high collar that Eliot had been stuffed into itched and his cufflinks wouldn’t quite stay clasped, but the only person he could complain to about his Baron costume was Mikel. Everyone else had remained aboard the Fulcrum, anchored on the other side of the island until it was time for the “pirate queen” to make her appearance. Mikel was preoccupied, too; after each former shipmate that she’d spotted once they’d arrived on Saint Nicolas Island, she’d gotten just a little bit quieter.

Only a handful of ships could dock at Saint Nicolas’ main harbour, and all but two of the berths were currently empty. One held a fat-bellied shipping vessel in the process of offloading goods for the harbour town. Captain Olivia’s ship, the Queen’s Gambit, bobbed in the other, straining her moorings.

Above the harbour town, on a short rise, stood Lord Gastrell’s massive manor house. The place could have swallowed the town several times over. He guessed that over half the town worked for the Lord of the Manor. Probably why the place was so quiet, even in the middle of the afternoon.

“This collar is hot as hell,” he groused to Mikel.

“You look very fashionable,” she told him, clearly not paying attention. Another of her crewmates walked by, avoiding eye-contact. She swore under her breath.

Eliot grabbed the man’s sleeve, pulling him up short, and asked, “Hey. Goodsir. Yeah, you wouldn’t happen to know when the Haven’s Aegis is meant to pull into port, do you?”

“Um,” Mikel’s crewmate said, keeping a nervous eye on Mikel as she loomed behind Eliot. “No?”

“No?” Eliot repeated, then swore as creatively and ostentatiously as possible.

“Sorry?” the man ventured, not-so-casually backing away.

“Yeah, sure.” Eliot pulled himself upright. “Just ask around, alright?” He adjusted his cufflinks.

“Sure.” Mikel’s crewmate fled.

Mikel wore a painfully neutral expression on her face when Eliot turned back to her.

“We’ll figure this out,” Eliot told her.

“He could not even look at me. What has Olivia told them?”

“We got a plan, alright?”

Plan was to conspicuously ask around for the Haven’s Aegis (Parker’s name for the ship during the job). Problem was that the town was half-empty.

Except for the entourage coming down the main road from the manner.

“Got ‘em,” Eliot muttered. Louder, loud enough to carry, he said, “Shit,” and picked a random direction to start walking, leaving Mikel behind.

A runner from the entourage caught up with him The kid was maybe ten years old and liveried in green, acting as some sort of pageboy. He stopped Eliot and said, “Lord Gastrell would like to see you, sir.”

“That’s great. Just great. You want me to…” Eliot checked to make sure that Mikel had faded into the growing crowd of sailors and townsfolk. _Now_ there were people. “Yeah, sure, kid.”

Eliot let the kid lead him back to Lord Gastrell, who was a man much taller and much skinnier than Eliot had pictured him. He had a sort of cadaverous face that, combined with his fancy clothes, made him look like he was dressed up for his own funeral. Sure was a lot of lace going on.

“Welcome to my little island, ah—” Lord Gastrell paused and waited politely. He was accompanied by two footmen who he hadn’t quite trained out of their curiosity. Even the one struggling to hold Lord Gastrell’s massive shade parasol high enough not to hit his lord in the head kept stealing glances.

“Uh—” Eliot made the hesitation good and awkward. “Baron Casper Flynn.”

 _“Baron?”_ Lord Gastrell repeated. “Is that so. From where do you—”

“England,” Eliot blurted and was rewarded with an incredulous eyebrow-raise.

“Baron”—Gastrell paused—”Casper Flynn of England, I bid you welcome. I am Lord Lawrence Gastrell and I govern this charming little island. We so rarely see barons on Saint Nicolas, would you care to dine with me at the house?”

“No, uh. I mean.” Eliot made sure to swallow. “That’d be a great idea and all, but I’m really just looking for—”

“Then a quick meal at the tavern instead?” Gastrell didn’t give Eliot a chance to object again, just waved him toward the harbour town.

Eliot “gave in” and followed. So far, first contact with the mark was going pretty well to plan. Mikel trailed them, keeping close enough to fight her way to him if things went sideways.

Gastrell led the whole group to the town’s small tavern, one more public than Lucille’s but half the size. While the two footmen struggled with folding the parasol up, the pageboy held the door open. Looming, Gastrell all but shoved Eliot into the tavern proper.

Eliot tried to act nervous and not like he was counting exits and threats. Doors front and back and probably a storeroom. No stairs, despite the height of the place; the main room had a vaulted ceiling criss-crossed with rafters. Weird affectation in a place that didn’t need peaked roofs because it sure as hell didn’t snow.

The tavern also contained a problem. Captain Olivia sat at the end of one of the tables, paperwork spread out in front of her. Beyond having tied her blonde hair up in a knot, she hadn’t changed much from the last Eliot had seen her. His entrance drew her attention away from her papers and their eyes met.

Recognition flickered. Eliot shook his head, just the slightest _no._

About to speak, she snapped her mouth shut when she realized who Eliot had entered with.

“Captain,” Gastrell said by way of greeting. “I trust your final preparations are almost complete?”

“Yes, of course, Lord Gastrell,” Captain Olivia said. “We should be able to sail with the tide two days hence.”

“Two days.” Gastrell muddled over her answer, beckoning Eliot to the table with Captain Olivia. “I suppose that will have to be good enough. Now, Olivia. Meet Baron Casper Flynn.” His faint stress on the word _baron_ was positively disdainful.

“Oh,” Captain Olivia said, a little strangled. “Nice to meet you?”

“Yes, yes,” Gastrell said, waving away the attempt at pleasantries before Eliot could reply. He made no move to ask the tavernkeep hovering just out of range of the table about the promised meal. “What I’d like to know, Baron, is what you are doing on my island?”

“Um,” Eliot said, “Well, uh, that’d be—I’m looking for the Haven’s Aegis. Her captain promised to meet me here at your docks.”

Gastrell leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “Do tell?”

Eliot fiddled with his cufflinks and glanced around as if hunted. “Just here for a little transaction and I’ll be out of your hair.” He couldn’t help but lift his gaze to the wisps of brown that covered Gastrell’s mostly-bald head. He winced.

“A transaction? Indeed.” Gastrell shared a glance with Captain Olivia. When Eliot didn’t go on, Gastrell’s expression hardened. “For what?”

“Just a bit of gold. Uh. Statue. Nothing…” Eliot paused to adjust his collar. “Nothing valuable.”

“From the Haven’s Aegis?” Gastrell asked. He clicked his tongue when Eliot nodded in confirmation. “I see.”

A short pause and he said again, “I see.” He stood abruptly. “Well, I shan’t keep you if you do mean to be on your way.”

“Oh, that’s, um, great,” Eliot said, finding his feet as well. “I’ll just—”

“Be going, yes. Thank you for your time, Baron Flynn.”

“Sure,” Eliot said.

Gastrell didn’t bother to bid Captain Olivia farewell. He left the tavern with a footman and pageboy in tow just as the second footman opened the door, parasol finally stashed somewhere discreet.

“We’re leaving,” Gastrell told him as he strode past and back out into the afternoon sun.

Turning, Eliot stared at Captain Oliva, then grimaced. She was giving him a baffled look, taking in his clothes, collar to cufflinks. “Really? _Flynn?”_

Mikel stuck her head into the tavern before he could reply. “Hey, Baron…”

She trailed off when she spotted her former Captain, an expression of naked hurt settling over her features. Yeah, with the tavernkeep still hovering and the barmaid peeking out of the kitchen, there wasn’t any sort of discussion they could have here that would do anyone any good.

Eliot gestured farewell at Captain Olivia and turned on his heel, collecting Mikel as he left. “C’mon. We need to disappear.”

“Aye, Baron,” she said, eyes on Captain Olivia until the door to the tavern shut behind them.

 

* * *

 

 

The Fulcrum slid into her berth in Saint Nicolas’ main harbour as night fell, and Parker quickly dismissed everyone who wasn’t absolutely crucial to go hide belowdecks with shuttered lanterns. One by one they disappeared through the main hatch, leaving her alone at the helm.

Once everyone was out of sight, Hardison popped his head out of the hatch behind her. He clung to the ladder instead of coming all the way up on deck.

“You really think all this is necessary?” he asked after a long silence.

“Maybe not, but it’s fun. I love playing a pirate queen.”

Hardison paused at that. “Girl, you—you are a pirate queen.”

“Yeah, but I don’t usually get to wear the bangles.” Parker rattled one arm. Her mass of bracelets jangled.

“Parker,” Hardison said. “Come to bed. We make sure our night watch is hidden and you can get some sleep.”

Parker hesitated. Eliot and Mikel had gone back ashore at Haven and were staying in town for the night after letter her know what had happened, so they were fine, but something about how Gastrell had so quickly abandoned Eliot bothered her. “I think we want the spookiest ship, so I should at least wander around a little bit.”

“Alright, then I’ll keep you company as long as I can.”

Paker rattled her bangles at him in response. The harbour town was just settling down to sleep. People on the streets near the docks could see her ship.

Nobody approached.

Her ship creaked and Eliot’s chickens drowsed in their coop, but beyond that the only sounds that carried across the water were from the harbour town itself. So far so good.

She had a thought, one attached to a tiny worry.“Can we fill the bladders when it’s time for sleep?”

“Anything you want,” Hardison said, already half-asleep on his ladder. Navigating was hard work, even when they weren’t going very far. “Anything you want.”

 

* * *

 

Whenever Parker stayed up most of the night, or even just part of the night, and then fell asleep in her clothes in the captain’s cabin, nobody disturbed her. She was the captain, for one, but for two, Hardison had conspired with everyone to let her get her ‘beauty sleep’ no matter what.

Sometime she felt a little guilty for only getting regular sleep whenever he said something about it, but it did mean that when Hardison shook her awake sometime after noon the next day, she wasn’t used to it and almost bit him.

“Hey, now,” he protested, yanking all of his limbs out of danger, but it was a token protest. He knew the risks. “We’ve got a problem.”

“The mark is a problem,” she said, still a little dazed with sleep.

“And immediate problem, yeah. As in, he’s here. With Maggie.”

Parker came all the way awake. “Here? He’s not supposed to be here yet. How did he get a Maggie?”

“Maggie-Maggie, not a Maggie.”

That was worse. Nate’s former wife Maggie was definitely not a pirate. She verified pirate treasure, making sure it was really piratey. Or maybe really treasure. And she knew them. At least she liked them.

Now that Parker was awake, though, she heard the whooping hullo from the dock. “I need to get out there.”

“Don’t forget your bangles,” Hardison said, clearly worried.

He helped her shove bracelets and baubles up her arms until she almost couldn’t bend at the elbows. Perfect. She _loved_ playing pirate queen. She needed to stop playing pirate queen inside, though, and start playing it outside.

 

* * *

 

Parker strode across the creepily empty deck and down the gangplank alone. Her entire crew was still holed up inside the ship and they were going to stay that way until it was safe to come out. She was glad Eliot had made sure they had gotten all the yarn was onboard.

Her bracelets jangled as she halted in front of Gastrell and the actual Maggie, who was staring at her consternation. She knew better than to interrupt a job, though, so she didn’t. Gastrell also had like five extra people, including a kid, all in classy green livery. One held a really big parasol. The rest were paying more attention to her than to him.

Gastrell looked Parker up and down, studying her embroidered jacket and fancy boots. “Captain of the Haven’s Aegis, I presume?”

Parker stared long enough for him to get uncomfortable and to force himself not to fidget and for Maggie to have to cover her mouth to keep herself from laughing.

“Captain Alice White.” She stuck out her hand, all her bangles making the best racket. And she really didn’t think she needed to draw this out, not when he’d brought Maggie. “You want the statue.”

Gastrell made a face, his skinny, wrinkly face twisting like he’d smelled something bad, but he shook her hand. “A certain baron informed me that you were using my island as your place of transaction, and I found myself curious.”

Parker didn’t say anything, just waited him out. She made herself look super bored.

Gastrell cleared his throat. “I am Lord Lawrence Gastrell, governor of this island. Let us see your statue.”

Still silent, she disappeared belowdecks for the two seconds it took for Hardison to shove the Ugly Jesus statue that they’d decided on into her arms. The statue had all mismatched proportions and features that weren’t quite right when you looked at him, and he’d been their best candidate for cursed pirate gold because his little eyes seemed to follow you when you moved.

Parker returned down the gangplank bearing the thing, and had a great view of everyone’s mostly-horrified reactions.

Except for Maggie. Her eyes widened and she was drawn forward, almost in spite of herself. “How did you find this?”

Parker was really glad she had decided to play mum this time, because she sort of wanted to tell her how she’d stolen it from other pirates and how it had almost been a challenge. She didn’t, though, because Maggie already had her hands on Ugly Jesus’s ugly little face.

“Spanish,” Maggie said, finding the maker’s mark. “Looted from one of the native empires, melted down, refashioned. The gold alone is worth—” She shook her head and quoted a number that almost made Parker smile even if Alice wouldn’t. “But as an icon—this is Agustín Blas’s work. He’s…”

At this point, Maggie glanced at Gastrell to find him waving at her to continue, a calculating light in his eyes.

“Oh, he’s sort of a novelty among scholars and surprisingly popular elsewise,” Maggie finished. “His castings are strangely compelling, if perhaps not the most technically...precise.” She meant ugly.

Parker was proud that she’d picked the right statue for the job, because Gastrell looked like Christmas had arrived right while Maggie was speaking.

“I would purchase your statue,” he told Parker.

“We had marked this gold for the baron,” Parker said.

“I can pay,” Gastrell said. He then gestured expansively back up toward his manor on the hill. “I do not lack for funds.”

“Should you touch such blood-soaked gold, upon your head shall justice fall tenfold.”

The subsequent awkward, shuffling silence was broken only by Maggie’s cough as she covered up her laugh.

Gastrell’s silence was of a different sort than the others’, one tinged with a greater wariness, and his gaze shifted from Ugly Jesus to Parker and back again several times. That Maggie and the rest of his entourage were there seemed to give him courage, however, and he recovered after a moment. “So—would you accept…?” And he quoted a number not much higher than the base price of the gold itself. If Parker were really selling the statue, she would be offended.

But she wasn’t, so she nodded. “The baron was not destined for such a relic.”

After another pause, Gastrell said, “Good, then.”

“Send your payment to the Haven’s Aegis,” Parker said. She winked at Maggie, dumped Ugly Jesus directly into Gastrell’s waiting arms, and turned and left all of them gawking as she returned to her ship.

Cursed statue delivered. Time for the next phase of the plan.

 

* * *

 

Mikel slunk off to try and find the statue as soon as Hardison let her and Eliot in one of the many side doors of the manor house. Somewhere in the warren of rooms sat the night footman and his oil lamp, waiting for his sleeping master to ring the bell pull. He was the only one they had to avoid at this time of night, when the kitchen fires were banked and all the servants were asleep but the one.

Pig’s-blood stained bandages wrapped his torso and half of his face, and Parker and Eliot had dusted his skin with flour to make him look gray and bloodless in the moonlight. Knots of failed lace dripped from his arms in ragged loops, the crew’s enthusiastic contribution to the disguise.

“Next time,” Hardison whispered, “I am bringing the flour with me. I will put it on my face right in the hall. I am leaving trails. The cook will take one look and know.”

“Very distinctive trails,” Eliot told him absently, which didn’t help Hardison’s nerves. “But you’re not leaving trails, and even if you were, this place’ll be cleaned before anyone notices. I’m more worried about all this blood.”

‘All this blood’ were the sheep bladders filled with more of the pig’s blood, and each of them had a tack to puncture their own personal bladder tucked somewhere about their person.

“Just in case,” Hardison said.

“We’re carrying a lot of just-in-case crap tonight.”

Like flash powders and extra lockpicks while Parker was minding the crew and not helping them haunt. Hardison didn’t like it when Parker was worried, just like he didn’t like some of her contingencies this time around.

Damn, though. Sophie’s man hadn’t been kidding when he’d described the manor house with only the word ‘bigger.’ Everything in it looked real expensive, too, and he was glad that Parker was still back on the ship or they’d be trying to tuck all sorts of things under their shirts. “Man loves his house,” Hardison said.

Eliot froze. “I hear something.” He squinted. “Lots of somethings. Run.”

Like Hell Hardison was going to run when he’d have a better chance at hiding. He ducked into the nearest room, leaving the door open a crack. A...blue sitting room, maybe? Empty, though, and the window on the far wall looked like an exit.

Eliot, like an idiot, hadn’t picked a room. He just stood himself in the middle of the hall and waited.

Footsteps approached, several pair, and Hardison watched through the cracked door as lantern-light poured across the carpet and Eliot stiffened in surprise.

“Well, now, Eliot Spencer. To what do we owe your presence?”

 _Shit._ Captain Olivia. She was not supposed to be here, not when she had rooms in town.

“You’ve got the wrong man, Captain,” Eliot said. “Ain’t nobody here by that name.”

Worse still, Gastrell’s voice drifted down the hall. “Come now, _baron,_ surely we friends can dispense with the pretense. The good captain here is quite renowned in her circles for knowing a great deal about a great many pirates.”

More footsteps and Captain Olivia came into view, stopping well within arm’s distance of Eliot. Hardison was pretty sure he should actually be running at this point. All he could see of the muscle that flanked Captain Olivia were the silhouettes of hairy arms and beefy thighs.

Captain Olivia leaned in close to Eliot and whispered something that Hardison couldn’t hear. Eliot whispered something back. She nodded.

“You really expect me to admit anything?” Eliot announced.

Gastrell’s voice came again, “Oh, indeed, no.”

The thunder of a pistol roared down the hallway. On cue, Eliot, Captain Olivia, and her brawlers burst into motion.

Eliot dove forward toward Captain Olivia as she swung a punch at him. He grabbed her arm and brought his elbow down hard on it. Her shriek accompanied the meaty crunch of bone breaking. She dropped back.

There were too many limbs in the dark for Hardison to follow, and it was taking way longer than Eliot’s fights usually did. He had to track the fight in grunts of impact and snarls of pain, until there was another roar of black powder from the far end of the hall.

Eliot went down. First to one knee. Then to his hands.

Hardison grabbed for the door. Eliot couldn’t go down. Two half-trained assholes could never do what the best fighters in the Caribbean had failed at for years.

Captain Olivia met his eyes the instant before he shoved the door open. The pit dropped out of his stomach.

But she just backed away, panting and cradling her arm. Hardison was forced to sit there while Gastrell’s bully boys got in too many nasty kicks.

Blood began to soak into the carpet. A lot of blood.

 

* * *

 

“I need you to break my arm,” Captain Oliva told him as she leaned in close to whisper to Eliot. She smelled like sweat and anxiety, her hair half-fallen around her ears. “I’m sorry.”

The _sorry_ was a little damn late. “You sure?”

She nodded, jaw tight.

He wasn’t going to argue, not with two thugs in Gastrell’s green livery breathing down their necks. Lifting his chin, already adjusting his stance for a fight, he focused on Gastrell at the far end of the hall, squinting in the lamplight. “You really expect me to admit to anything?”

“Oh, indeed, no,” Gastrell said. His nightshirt fluttered as he lifted his arm and leveled a pistol down the hall. There was no way he’d be able to predict who he’d hit; the pistol he held would be way too inaccurate at that distance.

Then he fired.

A damn miracle that the shot didn’t hit anything but the wallpaper, but it gave Eliot his opening. Captain Olivia threw a punch and he snapped her arm.

The thugs had no brains, no skill. They punched and Eliot punched back. Probably would have stabbed themselves with their own daggers if the hall wasn’t too narrow for blades..

He could put them down, but there was still Gastrell; he could hear him reloading. Powder rattled against metal. They were gonna have to run Plan G.

Annoyed, Eliot dropped his guard to take some hits. More than he would have liked, too. Gastrell was the slowest damn reloader in the Caribbean.

Finally, the hall rang with pistol fire. He mimed impact. No idea where the bullet went. Slow, dramatic fall onto his face. Jab his tack into the blood bladder strapped to his ribs.

But the thugs weren’t done. One kicked him in the head, rattling his brains. His damn luck they were too stupid to know they’d won. He’d committed to the plan. Couldn’t fight back.

Maybe a bad idea.

Mikel’s voice calling Captain Olivia’s name. Kicks stopping. A warm hand on his throat, at his pulse. Another hand shoving something squishy against his chest.

“He is dead.” Mikel’s voice. “Caught in the chest.”

Gastrell’s distant, “Pity. I would have liked to see him hanged.” A pause. Closer: “Ah, well. Dispose of it before it starts to smell.”

Hoisted over a shoulder. Mikel’s. Warmth leaking from the squishy thing. Blood.

If he wasn’t dead, he’d smirk. Blood all over the asshole’s nice house.

Darkness.

 


	2. Fire

“You look positively awful,” Sophie said, daubing at the cuts scattered across Eliot’s face. She couldn’t quite avoid the bruises and his whole face stung like hell. He resisted swatting her away. “Whose idea was it to let Eliot get beat to Hell and back?”

“We weren’t supposed to use Plan G.” Parker didn’t sound happy. “And it wasn’t supposed to include really big boots. It was a contingency. A spooky contingency.”

Propped up on pretty much all the pillows Lucille’s owned, Eliot had been tucked into the big bed in “Lucille’s” room while he was unconscious. Sometime between last night and this evening, they’d sailed back home to regroup, taking Maggie with them. Hardison and Parker sat on either side of him, half in his lap, while Sophie kept holding out her hand back toward Mikel, who passed her wetted cloths on cue. The others were minding the tavern downstairs, Maggie probably swapping stories with Tara while Amy absorbed every word.

Hardison was holding onto Eliot’s hand and there was no indication he was ever going to let go. “We really didn’t count on Olivia just straight-up betraying us like that, though. Called him out, by name. By _name._ What was he supposed to do?”

“Not almost die for real,” Sophie said, sitting back down on the end of the bed and dropping the last blood-stained cloth in a bucket on the floor. “Just a thought.”

Annoyed, Eliot said, “I’ll heal. Besides, I think something’s weird here.”

Mikel said, “Yes. These plans.”

“No,” Eliot snapped, then winced at the spike of pain that stabbed through his shoulder. More gently, he said, “I mean, she asked me to break her arm. That’s...that doesn’t sound like betrayal so much as changing the con. I mean. There’s no way she would expect me to go down. She’s worked with us before.”

“You were shot,” Parker said.

Hardison let out his breath. “No, no, I said it looked like he was shot. Scary as hell in the dark.”

“I wasn’t shot, Parker,” Eliot said.

Parker’s look was suspicious, and she patted the center of Eliot’s chest again. They’d scrubbed off the pig’s blood and changed him into something clean sometime since he’d passed out. “I believe you,” she said. “But if you weren’t shot and Olivia wanted to change the con, then we’re missing something. Why not let us do our thing?” A moment later, she answered her own question. “Time. She needed more time. Okay, we can’t work around her if there’s stuff we don’t know. Does she know all of her crew are going to die?”

“She must, if she’s buying time,” Eliot said. “A broken arm’s not much, but it might be enough to keep them from having to attack...today? Would it have been today?”

“Today, yes,” Mikel agreed. “So we need...her. To join us. This famous pirate hunter who means death for those like you—like us.”

Hardison shrugged, jostling Eliot enough that he sucked in his breath. “Sorry. Sorry, just she’s done it once. This time around, we thought we’d give her some solid plausible deniability like the kind Maggie’s gonna get, but that’s really not going to work. We gotta talk to her.”

“Then I’m going with you,” Sophie declared. “You need me, since you’re down one baron and up one very stubborn Eliot.”

“Hey,” Eliot protested. Hardison squeezed his hand.

Parker narrowed her eyes at Sophie, but did not immediately say no. “Ghost?”

“Are you offering to let me play one?” Sophie replied.

After a moment of scrunched-face thought, Parker nodded. “Yeah. Hardison can help Eliot.”

“Eliot can help Eliot,” Eliot said. “I don’t need—”

“You were shot,” Parker told him. “And anyway, there’s a new plan now and you have to have ghost friends.”

“He wasn’t—he—” Hardison gave up. “Plan G?”

“A variation. Mikel can’t be a ghost this time.”

Mikel blinked at that. “Was I going to be a ghost in Plan G to begin with?”

“That’s why I called it Plan G,” Parker said, like that was obvious. “New plan. Plan...H? Plan H.”

“Is H for ‘haunting’?” Hardison asked.

Parker just grinned at him and launched into an explanation of everyone’s new roles.

Her and Hardison’s familiar warmth and the rise and fall of their voices set Eliot at ease. Relaxing back against his pile of pillows, he let the new plan wash over him, along with Sophie’s ideas on how Hardison could spend the statue’s price on Lucille’s, and Hardison’s scattered complaints that they hadn’t even had to prove Eliot was a baron after all. All that work, wasted.

In the morning, he’d figure out what he could still do injured while they were rounding up their crew who’d gotten their surprise night ashore. For now, he’d enjoy Parker’s hand on the center of his chest and Hardison’s palm clasping his tight until his still-blooming aches began to fade enough so he could sleep.

 

* * *

 

Even though Hardison knew for a damn fact that Sophie was not actually a ghost, her gauzy veil and long dress that hid her feet made her look like she was floating up the hallway toward them where he waited for her in the pitch dark outside of Gastrell’s bedroom. The lantern in her hands was turned low, just enough to cast light up across her face and shadows upon every wall. Mikel strode behind her in a slow, watchful stalk, but once more the wee hours of the morning were quiet ones for the manor house.

“Lady in White, good choice,” Hardison told her as she came drifting up to him, Mikel in her wake. “You get it delivered?”

Sophie gestured at Mikel with her lantern and Mikel shook her head. “Olivia was not here. I must deliver our note on our way back to Haven and the ship. She must truly be stalling her attack, and staying within the town among the crew.”

“Better there than here,” Sophie said. “We mustn’t wait any longer.”

“I expected guards,” Hardison said—which was about as far as he wanted to go in saying exactly how nervous he was creeping around this big haunted-ass mansion in the middle of the night. Even if he was the one haunting it.

Sophie smiled, an expression all the more sinister for the lantern light. “The threat was killed, and there are no strange ships in at the docks while we anchor at Haven. I do not doubt he feels very safe at the moment.”

“Then,” Mikel said, laying a hand on either of their shoulders, “Let us make him feel all his sins, instead.”

Hardison creaked the door open and Sophie held the light so that it would flicker and gutter just out of sight. She doused it when they entered. The large picture window on the room’s far wall let in only a dim, dancing moonlight as clouds scudded across the night sky. Hardison’s bloody wraps and Sophie’s ragged veil seemed to light with an ethereal glow, one just barely contained by the mouldering shadows of the yarn that accented their costumes.

Mikel stayed in the hall, just in case the night footman showed up, but Sophie and Hardison proccessed across the room hand in hand, parting only to take up posts at either side of his bed.

“Who is it?” Gastrell’s voice was breathy with fear. “Who—who goes there?”

Sophie bobbed her head on a three-count. On three, they both declared in unison, “The blood upon your hands has has sunk deep into the foundations of your home.”

Gastrell gasped and croaked, “What?”

Another three-count, and they said, “The blood upon your hands has sunk deep in the soil of your island.”

“No—this is some sort of—”

“The blood upon your hands has stained your name and soul,” Hardison and Sophie finished.

“Traitors!” Gastrell shouted, clutching one hand to his chest and scrabbling at his bedside table with the other. His tinderbox rattled. “Liars, I shall have you—” He turned from them to focus on lighting a candle and they took several long steps back away from the bed only to freeze when he turned back toward them.

Gastrell held the candle high and then wheezed like someone had punched him beneath the ribs. “No. No, no. Amaria, no, no. Josu. You’re gone, you—you can’t be…”

The candle flew at Hardison, and it took all his willpower to stand still while it thumped against his chest and went out. A cloud passed in front of the moon, plunging the room into darkness.

Another low wail came from the bed, “Leave me, spirits. Leave me, or I shall banish you with fire. Fire.” He was going to light more candles.

Hardison reached out to touch Sophie’s arm, and together they fled the darkened bedroom just a lick of flame larger than that of a candle brightened Gastrell’s linens.

Down the hall they ran, Mikel carrying their oil lamp behind them.

Only once they were down the stairs and outside once again, did Hardison try and speak, “Did he...did he light his bed on fire?”

Sophie laughed. “Well, _some_ one has a guilty conscience.”

“Let us go before his guilt drives him from his burning bed, then,” Mikel said. “We have a letter to deliver.”

 

* * *

 

Captain Olivia gasped as they untied her gag and removed her blindfold, and for a long moment she sat blinking at Parker, Sophie, and Mikel in the soft lamplight of the captain’s cabin of the Fulcrum’s Confidence. Hardison and Eliot stood behind her and out of sight.

Parker had made sure the chair was as a comfortable one, with padding on the seat and the arms both, because she knew how not fun it was to be tied to just bare wood. They had given Olivia a chance to do whatever she was going to do during the day after Mikel had delivered her letter. Once night fell again, however, it had become kidnapping time.

“You—you abducted me? You—what?” Olivia zeroed in on Mikel and her prodigious frown. “What’s that look for?”

“‘What?’ ‘What’ you ask me!” Mikel said, and Parker made a face, too, but more at Mikel. Yelling like that wasn’t how interrogating kidnapees went. Although really this was sort of a recruitment kidnapping, and Mikel did have a lot of anger she needed to figure out, so maybe Parker shouldn’t interrupt. Nobody else looked like they wanted to either.

“Yes. I do. I’m tied to a chair, for Christ’s sake.”

Mostly tied to a chair, Parker was about to say, but Sophie stopped with a hand on her elbow. But it was true: Olivia’s one arm was still in its sling across her chest.

“Yes,” Mikel agreed. “Yes, you are tied, because you have been acting in ways that make no sense. You put me ashore after I object to a job you never would have taken before. Why do this? Why risk gangrene instead of abandon this mercenary task altogether?”

Olivia let out her breath, closed her eyes, and nodded. “Why, indeed.”

Silence except for the waves against the ship’s sides.

“I’m sorry about Eliot,” Olivia said at last. “I had not meant—”

“Forgiven,” Eliot said before she could say anything more. Hardison helped to a chair where Oliva could see him and settled him in, brushing away a small tangle of yarn from the seat. He looked awful, but he was mostly walking, and he was very definitely alive and cranky. “You were buying time.”

Oliva sat blinking away tears for a good few second before she could reply. With profound relief, she then said, “Yes. I was buying time.”

“Why?” Parker asked.

“I—” Oliva stopped to swear under her breath, testing her restraints. “I had no choice that I could live with. Gastrell has documents that my stepfather passed to him after he was arrested, traded so that he would not be hung. They are my crew book, or rather, my father’s crew book before he passed his ship on to me. A forged letter of marque, a pirates code with the signatures of my crew. Evidence of the time my father tried to play pirate to catch pirates. He thought he had destroyed the documents. He didn’t.”

Parker said, “He tried to be us. He tried to pull a con?”

Oliva laughed. “You could say that. And after the Kings Pardon, so there can be no leniency for him, or us, if these documents come to light. Gastrell...if we don’t help him, he destroys us and my father. If we do, he destroys us after we have destroyed who knows how many innocents.”

“Sayin’ yes—” Eliot began.

“The only way to not kill my crew immediately and allow me time to send you Mikel.”

Mikel drew herself up, indignant. “You put me off. Without words. For a disagreement.”

“And where did you go?” Olivia asked.

Faced with Olivia’s question, Mikel turned and left the cabin entirely.

Sophie hummed thoughtfully. “Are you willing to work with us once more? I fear it will only be little things, with that arm.”

“Anything you ask,” Olivia said with a sigh. “Anything at all, though it may damn me.”

Parker met the eyes of each of her crew. “Alright. Then you’re in. Have you told Gastrell anything about the Fulcrum? Or the rest of us?”

Olivia swayed in her chair a little, the ropes keeping her upright. “Nothing. Today he put pressure on me to find, ah, an Alice White of the Haven’s Aegis, but I told him I had never heard of her. Which, in truth, I had not and still have not.” She managed a small smile. “I did read Mikel’s letter.”

“Good,” said Parker. “Then we still have a plan.” She waved at Hardison to untie Olivia. They’d have to figure out Mikel later, when there weren’t hundreds of people at the mercy of one really weird, evil guy.

Oliva thanked Hardison, tried to apologize again to Eliot—who wasn’t having any of that—and then smiled tentatively at Parker. “I do have one question, before you begin?” At Parker’s nod, she continued, gesturing at the interior of the cabin and toward the door that Mikel had left through, “There is yarn...everywhere. Simply everywhere. Why on Earth?”

“Oh!” Parker brightened. “Oh, the crew wanted to help make the boat look spooky, so they made cobwebs.”

“Cobwebs,” Olivia said faintly.

“Only half the crew can knit, so it’s been a group effort.”

Olivia put her face in her hand. “It’s beautiful.”

Parker grinned and perched on top of Hardison’s map table. “Let me tell you about Plan H.”

 

* * *

 

A light flickered beneath the door of the manor house’s study way, way past midnight. This was about the time when they’d come before, and instead of asleep in his bed, Gastrells was occupying the one room Hardison was pretty sure he’d be hiding Captain Olivia’s blackmail documents.

Eliot came staggering down the stairs leaning on Sophie, hissing, “He’s not in bed.”

Eliot’s haunting outfit was just his baron’s clothes stained with dried blood, and even though he knew Eliot hadn’t actually been shot, he felt a bit like Parker. When Eliot got close enough, he shored up his other side and placed a hand on Eliot’s chest, just to make sure. Not his favorite plan, watching Eliot die.

Hardison just tipped his head toward the light under the study door.

“Oh,” Sophie breathed. “Well, at least we hid the statue.”

“Find it in the chapel?” Hardison asked.

“Library. Not sure he goes into the chapel much.”

Eliot growled, “Could say the same about his bedroom.”

“We scared him, don’t worry. We just need to scare him a little bit more, don’t we?” Sophie smiled at both of them.

They opened the door to the study slowly, letting it swing on its hinges a little before revealing just the barest shades of Sophie and Hardison standing in the hall just outside of the door.

“You—” Gastrell said, color leaching from his already deathly-pale face. His desk was sprawled with documents, one corner occupied by probably the largest oil lantern Hardison had ever seen in his life. Man was planning to stay up until doomsday.

On Sophie’s three-count, Hardison and she intoned, “Blood-soaked gold makes for blood-soaked hands.”

Gastrell did not speak nor move.

Eliot shoved his way past the other two, snarling. His yarn caught at the edge of the door, forcing him to stop in the dim light between desk lamp and the hall’s dark. Hardison tried to free him while he shouted accusations. “You killed me, you bastard,” Eliot said. “Shot me. And now I’m trapped here—”

“Trapped,” Gastrell said. “No. No, you cannot be. You—”

Sophie and Hardison picked up their chant, Hardison a beat behind. “Blood-soaked gold, blood-soaked hands—”

Eliot was free of the door again. Things were going too fast, and Gastrell wasn’t responding how they’d expected. Superstitious, yeah, but...

“The statue. I knew it.” Gastrell stood, intent on Eliot’s bruised and scratched face. “And you knew about the statue, too, didn’t you?”

“Murderer,” Eliot spat.

Hardison had to make a grab for the back of his shirt as he wavered on his feet. Too quiet for Gastrell to hear, Hardison swore.

“The pirate hunter. Her crew watched the pirate’s ship dock. She must know,” Gastrell said. After a beat, he shouted, “Wraith! I demand answers!”

Eliot panted for a second, then grated out an, “Olivia.”

Gastrell pounced upon the word. “The good captain has my answers? Of course she would. Of course.” With a feverish light in his eyes, he seized the lamp, the one with the reservoir as big as his head, and started for the door where Eliot was still standing.

Sophie disappeared into the shadows beyond the door the instant she saw him coming toward them. Hardison used his grip on Eliot’s costume to yank him backward and as far down the hall as he could. In the windowless hallway, the bubble of light around Gastrell’s lamp deepened every shadow by constrast, and he stormed past the three of them without a sideways glance.

Once he was gone and they were in the quiet dark once more, Sophie sat down hard on the ground. “Well.”

Hardison sank to his knees, clutching Eliot. Eliot wheezed, one hand clasped to his shoulder, but he didn’t demand Hardison let him go.

 

* * *

 

The door to the tavern slammed open, light the massive oil lantern in Gastrell’s hands flooding the room with wavering light. The rafters seemed to bent and danced, their reaches still shrouded in darkness. Parker crouched in the rafters, eyes on their mark, her pirate queen bangles carefully muted under her armpits. Mikel kept hidden behind the kitchen door, ready to discourage the tavernkeep and barmaid from intervening.

This was the touchiest part of the plan.

“Olivia!” Gastrell bellowed, his skeletal face hollowed by shadow. “Oliva! I demand you!”

Parker had warned her that odds were good Gastrell would show up. Just maybe not this early.

Olivia spilled through the door to the adjoining guest rooms at a stumble, mostly dressed and carrying a candle in a brassy chamberstick. She halted, breathing harshly, wary of her broken arm. “What do you want, Lord Gastrell. You’re going to wake the dead.”

“They’re already awake.” Gastrell laughed, high and fast. “They’re already awake. I sent you—I sent you after the pirate Alice White. Alice. And her ship. Her ship, the Haven’s Aegis.”

“You...didn’t send me after her,” Olivia said, doing a good job of sounding baffled.

“Yesterday. I asked after her. I needed to know—the statue she sold me was cursed.”

“Lord Gastrell,” Olivia said, backing away. “I can’t find you this pirate.”

“You can. You must.”

“There’s no ship. No pirate. No one has docked here since the supply vessel several days ago.”

“No.”

“I had an appraiser in. She confirmed—”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t—”

“No!” Gastrell howled, clutching his lamp to his chest.

Parker’s cue. She swung gently down from the rafters to land on the floor behind Gastrell, then shook her arms to make her bangles really loud.

Gastrell whirled. “You—”

“The blood on your hands has soaked into this island,” she told him in her flattest voice.

Olivia gasped. “Are you seeing…?”

Gastrell backed away from Parker, his chest heaving, the whites of his eyes stark rings around his irises. His lamp rattled in his trembling grip.

From the kitchen, Mikel made her entrance, “What is going on?” Loud. Distracting. When Gastrell turned toward this new threat, Olivia dropped her chamberstick onto the floorboards with a crash. Parker took the opportunity to hop back into the rafters, swinging herself back up and into the dark.

By the time Gastrell recovered, Parker had vanished into thin air. He fled, lamp clutched to his breast like a child.

 

* * *

 

“Just rip the drawer out,” Eliot said, leaning hard on Hardison’s shoulder as he was trying to finagle Parker’s lockpicks into the keyhole.

Hardison jammed the tenser rod in and tried to get a good twist on it. “He’ll know we’re here. And not ghosts. We can’t just leave—”

“Problem!” Sophie called as she whipped into the room in a flurry of yarn and gauzy ghost material. “We have a very large problem, in the same of the mark coming back right this minute.”

“Shit,” Eliot said. “We need Parker for the lock.”

“I really don’t think it will matter,” Sophie said, breathless. “He’s carrying that lamp.”

She paused.

“Above his head.”

Hardison jerked his head up. “He what?”

Sophie mimed carrying a pumpkin or a large ball above her head, which was close enough to the shape of the lantern that he got the picture. Hardison yanked the lockpicks out and shoved them in his pockets. “Eliot, just break it. Sophie, shout for the servants, then grab anything you think you want.”

“What?” Eliot said, as Sophie disappeared down the hall, shrieking bloody murder. “Now? Why didn’t we just do this—”

“Because when Sophie and I spooked him the other night, he set his bed on fire.”

“Dammit, Hardison,” Eliot snapped, snatching a letter-opener off the desk and jamming it into the draw with his good arm. He then struggled to his feet and slammed his heel down snapping the lock clean out of the wood. “Clean it out.”

By the time Hardison found his way to the kitchen door, the logs and documents under one arm and Eliot leaning hard on him, there were a handful of servants dashing in and out, trying to save whatever they could before the majority of the manor caught fire.

Flames were already licking the second story, one whole corner of the manor consumed and the surrounding vegetation crisping black with the heat.

Gastrell stood nearest the corner, his eyes fixed on the flames. He didn’t twitch even when Sophie passed right near him in her rush to get to Hardison and shove her shoulder under Eliot’s other arm.

A small satchel on her other arm bulged suspiciously. “You’re safe,” she said, clearly relieved. “I got everyone out.”

“No doubt launching another half-dozen ghost stories,” Hardison said.

“If only,” she said. “Blackmail?”

Hardison dipped his chin toward his armload of paper. “Everything I could find.”

Eliot, however, watched Gastrell for as long as he could while the three of them collectively limped their way back toward town. When a bend in the road blocked his view, he shook himself and said, “You think he’s going to leave?”

“Considering he just burnt down the very first thing he spent all his money on when he arrived here, I imagine he must,” Sophie said.

“Man’s got ghosts,” Hardison added. ‘Island’s full of ‘em, and I don’t mean us. He’ll leave.”

Eliot huffed and squeezed Hardison’s shoulder. “And the job’s not over ‘till he leaves.”

 

* * *

 

“I do hope you have a nice voyage, Lord Gastrell,” Olivia said politely at the far end of the dock.

The captain’s mate of the merchant ship stood impatiently at the top of the gangplank, waiting for Gastrell to embark. The rest of the docks were full of Olivia’s crew, and they’d been ordered to ignore Parker as she walked with measured steps toward Gastrell holding Ugly Jesus in her arms.

Gastrell stood alone in singed finery, an air of smoke and hauteur about him. “I’m sure it will be—” He cut off the moment he saw Parker. He swallowed hard, gaze dropping to Ugly Jesus. With none of the dockhands in any way acknowledging her, he couldn’t either. “Goodbye, Captain.”

With that, he turned on his heel and charged up the gangplank onto the merchant vessel, past the baffled captain’s mate. When nobody said anything otherwise, the mate whistled up his men and the pulled the gangplank onto the deck and made to cast off.

Parker halted at Olivia’s side and set Ugly Jesus by her feet. He was really heavy and the morning was already hot.

“He’s almost all the way gone,” she said.

“Yes, he is,” Olivia said, contemplative.

After a pause, Parker asked, “You want to follow him to make sure?”

Oliva laughed, “Yes, yes, I do.”

 

* * *

 

Eliot stood at the helm, the polished handles of the ships’ wheel warm beneath his hands. The ashes of the manor house hadn’t yet cooled, and they were already back out at sea in their yarn-festooned ship, following the merchant schooner. He squinted at the horizon, trying to spot the sail. “We’re on course?” he asked Hardison.

“They’re gettin’ creative,” Hardison said, holding his thumb up to the sky and turning to jot down arcane notation on their current chart. “But they’ll get there.”

“But not swiftly,” Sophie said with some amusement as she leaned on the bannister in front of the wheel, gazing over the the front half of the ship.

Mikel and Olivia came up from belowdecks, Parker after them, and they trouped up the ladder to come stand in the space behind the helm. Parker arranged Mikel and Olivia to her liking, and then handed them a tied bundle of papers.

“Here. I wanted to do this officially, so that we could all make sure that you had your hands on everything yourself,” she said.

Olivia accepted the bundle with faint shock and Mikel put a hand between her shoulder blades to keep her steady. The twine tumbling disregarded to the deck as she shuffled the papers, staring at the fading ink and her father and crew’s names. “It’s all here.”

Mikel had to put both hands on Olivia’s shoulders. “Breathe, breathe.”

“It’s all here,” Olivia repeated. “They’re safe.”

“They are.”

“Thank you,” Olivia said to Mikel, holding her gaze. She then turned to Parker, to each of the others, and said again, “Thank you.”

Parker just gave her a bright smile. “Glad we could help.” She popped up at Eliot’s side and slung an arm around his shoulders. “Aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” said Eliot, more gruffly than he’d intended, leaning into her as Hardison leaned back against his leg.

Olivia just shook her head and stepped to the the edge of the ship. In one great heave, she flung every bit of paper she’d just been handed over the side and into the sea.

“That is a solution,” Mikel said, joining Olivia at the railing. “Though I might have prefered fire.”

“Rejoin my crew,” Olivia blurted.

Mikel blinked at the non-sequitur.

Olivia hesitated, then touched her arm. “Please?”

“Of course. But on one condition,” Mikel said. When Olivia nodded, she smiled and said, “We do not hunt our pirate friends. Ever.”

“Of—” Olivia caught herself, turning wide eyes on Parker and the rest of the crew. “Of course. Right. Pirates.” And her with a legacy.

Parker just squeezed Eliot hard enough that he grunted, then dropped to lean against Hardison while he worked on their charts, apparently oblivious to the decision that Olivia needed to make.

But Olivia just shook her head as if at some private joke. With a wry smile that only made Mikel’s grow larger, Olivia said, “What pirates? All I see are ghosts.”

THE END


End file.
